Amy Adams has recalled a dramatic real-life emergency in which she helped keep a stabbing victim alive on the streets of Santa Monica, and the story has an unexpectedly emotional ending.
The actress, 51, shared the account on Monday’s episode of the Smartless podcast, telling hosts Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes that she and her family were leaving their favourite restaurant when they found themselves first on the scene of a serious attack.
“These people were screaming and a guy was walking and they were yelling, ‘He’s dying!’ And my husband’s like, ‘That’s blood!'” Adams recalled.
She immediately took charge, telling her husband Darren Le Gallo to stay with their daughter Aviana while she and her father Richard ran over to help.
The man had been stabbed in the neck.
Fortunately, the family had towels with them as they were heading to the beach.
Her father, who she noted had “been on lots of scenes,” applied pressure to the wound while Adams focused on keeping the victim calm.
“You need to calm your pulse rate. Take a deep breath in,” she told him. “The more you struggle, the faster you’re going to bleed. Just lay down. Let’s elevate this.”
In a remarkable twist, Adams ran into the same man roughly a year later while dining out.
A stranger approached her saying he had heard a story about her being on the scene of a stabbing.
“And I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s you. And it was him.'” She described the reunion as “crazy,” adding that he was “all teary” and had his son with him.
When pressed on what had led to the stabbing, Adams said that as best she could piece together, the man had been out with an old university friend, they had stopped at a liquor store on the way back to someone’s house, and things had inexplicably turned violent.
“He just freaked out,” she said, acknowledging she never got the full story.
